Nonprofit Leaders: Equality Is to Equity as Outreach Is to Inclusion (You’re Not Still Using “Outreach,” Are You?)
Among the worst phrases ever put into use is “something for everyone.” Poisonous puffery, especially when describing the activities of a nonprofit service organization (especially the arts). And on top of that, it’s an outright lie. Nothing is for everyone, except maybe water or air. Maybe.
The ambition to be “Something for everyone” inevitably dissolves organizations into “Nothing for anyone.” Without focus on why you do what you do, you cannot serve even the most willing of participants. By abdicating concentration on solving the societal issue to instead attempt to offer programs for every person alive, you fall into the trap of losing power. No one will — or should — trust you to do what it is that you do best, because even you don’t profess to know what that is.
Which leads to the assumption being thrown about by well-meaning manifesto writers for DEI efforts across the nonprofit landscape (for-profit, as well). The “E” in “DEI” does not stand for “equality.” It stands for “equity.”
The Annie E. Casey Foundation discussed the difference in an updated article in April.
Equity involves trying to understand and give people what they need to enjoy full, healthy lives. Equality, in contrast, aims to ensure that everyone gets the same things in order to enjoy full, healthy lives. Like equity, equality aims to promote fairness and justice, but it can only work if everyone starts from the same place and needs the same things.
Equity is an active concept; equality is a passive concept. “give people what they need” vs. “ensure that everyone gets the same things.”
Equality is a ticket window. Open to the public. Anyone could buy a ticket.
Equity requires no ticket window. Instead, it has an active program to ensure that under-represented, ostracized, or historically omitted people attend the event.
Equality is what the Supreme Court dealt with in Brown vs Board of Education (1954) when it eliminated the shame of “separate but equal.” In the most harmful, deliberately oblique definition of equality, the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas offered something called “school.” To them, all children were able to attend “school,” in keeping with the 14th Amendment. The only issue, of course, was that the schools were funded far differently, with white schools receiving not merely a lion’s share, but all the lions’ shares of state support. In the strictest sense of the word, however, equality was their defense.
The Supreme Court, overturning its own ruling of Plessy vs Ferguson (1896) that allowed such heinous activity, determined that its definition of equality had evolved. Each child had to be insured the same opportunity to succeed. The only way to accomplish that, according to the Court and the Brown family, was to desegregate the schools.
That battle continues to be fought, of course. With history books and movie screens filled with epic tales of white supremacy, it is hard to imagine that these horror stories are received equally among children of different ethnicities, religions, and backgrounds. The playing field of life starts unequal. The struggling class — BIPOC, Jews, LGBT, Muslims, disabled, etc. — have supremacist societies crushing them in some way from the moment of birth.
That’s what needs to change.
This is where equity comes in. Equality tells us about battles; equity informs us of all the outcomes on all the sides and what has to happen next to make the world a better place for all its inhabitants, not just the victors.
There is a direct connection between equality and the worst possible word some nonprofits still use to describe their toe-stubbing, awkward, yet mellifluous DEI efforts: “outreach.” Again, the “I” in “DEI” does not stand for “outreach;” it stands for “inclusion.”
Some plantation owners were more beneficent than others. Of course, they still owned people, which is an abomination. But they believed that the slaves were merely free labor, not non-human (the prevailing attitude at the time). As such, they were to be cared for in order to save the farms, the plantation, and the way of life.
They provided rudimentary education to these slaves in the form of books. They “reached out,” sending redacted bibles to the slaves in their cabins and giving them Sundays off (after a 100-hour week).
If they needed assistance reading these doctored bibles (with no Old Testament passages about slavery and the exodus included ), they provided it gladly. After all, what better literature could be provided that would send the message that life is meaningless when compared to a glorious afterlife?
Sending books to the cabins is outreach. Arts organizations with their one Black play per year leads to a special kind of outreach: tokenism.
Donors who give to nonprofits because they want to be perceived as better people than they actually are (John Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Andrew Carnegie — and more recently, the Sacklers, Jeff Bezos, and Darla Moore, for example) use money as their outreach token. It means far less to them than it does to a potential nonprofit recipient. The nonprofit uses the money to send bibles out into the field; the donor gets the credit. A satisfying transaction for everyone except those out in the field.
“Outreach” insults the very core of equity. Like equality, outreach is passive. But it also sends the statement: “We only want to talk to you because you’re BIPOC.”
Like equity, inclusion is an active concept. It requires, in a nonprofit arts organization’s case, the organization to stop producing and to start acting on behalf of the underserved people in the community because it’s the right thing to do. If your arts company is embarking on a newly-minted DEI program, you are required to change the way you do business from the top to the bottom, knowing that it will alienate some of the old-time (read: white) participants forever.
This is not a “both/and” scenario. The racists will be upset. Your biggest donors will be upset. Corporate heads will be upset. Board members will be upset. In many cases, politicians will be upset and will try to defund the NEA yet again.
You will likely lose money, especially at first.
If you’re a nonprofit service organization, then for Pete’s sake, serve. Your goal is to achieve impact, not profit. And you can’t serve with perfunctory statements of equality and outreach.
You can only do it with actions of equity and inclusion.
Are you ready?
